


I love you so much, I have loved you for years

by she_is_rysn



Category: Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Internal Monologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:14:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22653841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/she_is_rysn/pseuds/she_is_rysn
Summary: Some time before Way of Kings, Navani meditates on her feelings for Dalinar.
Relationships: Dalinar Kholin/Navani Kholin
Comments: 7
Kudos: 9





	I love you so much, I have loved you for years

I feel it like a pinch or a cramp - a tiny, internal, sporadic reminder that the feeling is still there, even if it’s less than before. The urgency returns too. That part is still frustrating, that after full-on years of maturation and rationalization, after attaining the smugness with which we eventually address old longings, something happens - it could be anything, it has been many things - to crowd my brain with sincere declarations which have never changed after all this time (storms they probably won’t ever change, will they), and like a stitch in the side I just have to stop in my tracks for a bit, breathe through the feeling and wait for it to pass. Everything else warps, too - my judgment gets cloudy and subjective and I can’t trust any impulse during this time, which thankfully I know now, I just wait and stew on the sentence or two I will never be able to revise, because I will never be able to speak it aloud. 

_I love you so much. I have loved you for years._

The first thing I say all the time. I know lots of ways it can feel to say that and they are mostly good. The second thing I have never said, have never had any occasion to say until now. It scares the life out of me.

Of course if there had ever been a good time to say the first thing to you, the _I love you_ part, then the second thing, the _for years_ part, wouldn’t have taken root or had anywhere to grow, but silence is good soil for pining, and this stupid love has become so hardy in its age, so self-sustaining that I truly do _forget_ sometimes. I think ‘oh that was a way I felt, not anymore though thank goodness’. Really quiz myself on it too - really look, really listen, really probe around to elicit a response in me. I go calling through the house, “Are you there? Are you in there? Anybody?” searching for the furious blushes of old, the casual remarks that came out as stammering, too-loud nonsense, the spikes in pulse after the lightest touch. I remember these things, and I look for them (not to hunt them, just to see if they’re there).

And...nothing! The house is empty! I only see a friend there, I see my friend, my brother. No phantom longing, no embarrassment, no lurking emotion. And I think, wonderful. It’s done. I finally got over that. About time. 

But then.

A week or month or year later, prompted by hardly anything at all, I find myself shouting in my own mind _I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, I HAVE LOVED YOU FOR YEARS_ , so loudly that I have to sit all the way down for a second and look around to see whether anyone heard or noticed, especially you. 

And sometimes it seems like you do notice. But you don’t say anything either. 

We have a lot at stake, I guess.

**Author's Note:**

> I swear I'm still working on the Balcony stories (and the smut), but this came kind of spilling out today so hopefully more will follow!


End file.
